About Rod

Rod takes the pictures. He has a degree in journalism, and set up a news-photo agency in 2006 working with dozens of photographers, selling their pictures to national and international publications. He's worked with many corporate clients, PR executives and media relations teams is a keen cyclist, runner and motorcyclist.

Why should we be wary of jumping on the social media bandwagon for PR campaigns Only a few years ago, having a website was seen as the new essential tool for all businesses. You may be old enough remember these early websites - I certainly am. Details about what companies did were neatly turned into little descriptors that fitted within our web designers’ templates. Things

Why I am keeping a social media diary this year. A New Year and already another broken resolution! Well, that’s how I usually start each year, but then again I tend to pick ridiculously unrealistic goals - like never drinking again or swearing not to steal chocolates from my daughter’s secret stash. Sound familiar? Well, this year you could make a vow that you

How improving your Facebook page can boost your PR success Just having a presence on the social media giant Facebook is no guarantee you’ll get instant success, like every other PR tool you have to work at it to get it right. Only then can you work out what gives you the best results and gets your fans liking and sharing your content - which

Does Facebook have a role to play in modern PR campaigns? Facebook will boost your PR campaign. Admit to spending time on Facebook these days and many people will look at you like you’ve just admitted your worst, dirty little secret. It’s almost fashionable to deny liking the social media giant, but with more than 1.71 BILLION USERS logging in monthly it’s an incredibly

Social Media Panic I think it’s time to invent this new phrase. Do me a favour and share my new linguistic revelation with your friends and followers on all your social media platforms. Just click that little thumbs-up icon right now. Go on. Don’t read to the end - just share my pearls of wisdom with all and sundry immediately. After all, that’s how

The A-Z of winning PR Last week I covered the A-M of winning PR, so continuing with that theme here are my thoughts on N-Z. NEWSWORTHY. Does your story pass the “so what?” test? You can find out more about this in our blog “What makes a story newsworthy?” OVER-EGG. While it’s true that journalists love hyperbole, resist the temptation to over-egg your story

The complete A-Z of winning PR Companies need to embrace winning PR and seek out every opportunity to get their stories in the news. But if you’ve ever looked for an easy-to-understand guide to successful PR then you may well have ended up even more confused because there are just so many different ideas and opinions. This handy A - Z guide to effective

Why I have Banned Press Releases. You’ve read loads of them. You may have written lots of them and many may have been published. But I have banned them. Why? Because the concept is fundamentally flawed. The Press Release - it’s the time-honoured conduit still used by PR professionals to send their clients’ message to journalists. The aim is to get the journalist to

The language of a winning PR photograph Language is the key method employed by all animals to express how they feel, what they need and who they’d like to mate with. But without the luxury of written and spoken words, most species have to resort to some rather unsavoury methods such as sniffing one another’s nether regions to decipher and transmit this very primeval

Four PR myths busted! Honestly, you’d be amazed at the misconceptions we regularly hear about PR. And most often from the very people who should be embracing the opportunities a creative PR campaign would offer them. It seems PR has earned itself a bad rap, with some people thinking we’re all like Edina from AbFab, or worse a fluffy champagne airhead whose favourite expression